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Toronto: The Ethiopian House

A few nights ago, I tried Ethiopian food for the first time. With four other friends, we headed to the Ethiopian House, one of the more well-known restaurants of its kind in Toronto.

True to its fame, this place did seem pretty popular. The interior was small and dark but almost all the tables, along with those on the patio, were taken. The whole restaurant had only one waitress, though, so service was a bit slow for it was difficult to catch her attention sometimes. However, contrary to many reviews, I found that the food came out within a reasonable amount of time, perhaps 15-20 minutes after we placed our order.

We ordered a vegetarian platter for four. Initially, seeing that other tables with only two people have such large platters, we thought that a platter for two would be enough. However, the waitress insisted that we up it to four so we relented. Well, one would expect that for paying that extra 25 dollars, there should at least be more food in the four-person platter, but it was the exact same size as all the platters seen on other tables with fewer customers than us! Perhaps we got more injeera rolls on the side, I don’t know, but I did feel rather cheated, for there was barely enough food on that so-called 4-person platter for the five of us.

Vegetarian platter

But that aside, I must say that the food was pretty decent. I enjoyed the lentil stews the most, for they had that wonderful starchiness often found in legumes and ranged from mild to spicy. The kale was quite sour, so I didn’t enjoy that as much for it only added to the sourness of the injeera. There were stir-fried veggies, which included string beans cooked to a degree of softness yet still retaining a bit of mouthfeel. The “Tikil Goman” (“Cabbage, carrots, potatoes, cooked in turmeric sauce”) was mild and rich. All this was served with injeera crepes to scoop up the stews, communal style. Despite the cost versus size discrepancy of our meal, it was definitely a novel and fun eating experience.